What was the scariest thing you could hear on the battlefield? What was the best thing you could hear?

Posted 9Aug2017.

“What was the scariest thing you could hear on the battlefield?”

The term “battlefield” is somewhat subjective at times. Today, the battlefield is fluid and poorly-defined, so I will break my answers and experiences into two different categories: in garrison (on the Forward Operating Base, or FOB), and “outside the wire” (not on the FOB).

In garrison:

My own demons of dread were summoned by someone keying the radios we carried. During Medevac operations, the duty crews were limited to a very small area and were required to carry a radio at all times. Keying the radio, for any reason other than to call the crews, especially at 3am, would bring down the wrath of those crews who were now upandmovingforthemissionthatwasgoingtofollow.

However, what typically followed was even worse than poor radio handling:

“Medevac! Medevac! Medevac! First and Third up crews. POI…” If the reader has ever pulled such duty, I apologize for the elevated blood pressure, heart rate, and adrenaline levels. For the blissfully uninitiated, however, that call meant that one was in for a possibly bad mission. Sending two crews was typical a decade ago, but indicated that there was a pretty good possibility that what was being called in was going to result in more than one bird being used for casualties. The fact that it was a “point-of-injury” (POI) mission meant that it was either direct contact with the enemy which resulted in casualties, or the result of one of the frequent improvised explosive devices (IED) detonations in the area.

Outside the wire:

“WIRESWIRESWIRES!” Coming in on final to any of the hastily-established landing zones (LZ’s) could be a nightmare, even on good days. Debris, garbage, wonderful little hiding spots for gunmen or secondary IED’s, but it never failed that the ground troops would miss the fact that there were single telephone or power lines running perpendicular to our approach, and the most attempts we made to get into one spot was four tries before we finally got on the ground to receive the patients.

Runner up for “outside the wire”:

Variations of “Guy with rifle/car not stopping, __ o’clock…”

“You left a patient…” (That one was bullshit – he was a “routine” patient who turned out to be in a cast and one of the spectators who stood there while we waited on the pad at that particular location while we waited for them to find the guy in a cast that needed to get on the helicopter. Complete breakdown of the staff there and complete bullshit that they tried to shift their incompetence to us.)

Any audio indication of the “master caution” panel. Helicopters break – sometimes in flight, and sometimes slowly.

“What was the best thing you could hear?”

In garrison:

Laughter. We played a lot of stupid jokes on each other to break the tension. The camaraderie within the Medevac units was dysfunctional, at times, but we still managed to work out our issues and come together for the mission.

Outside the wire:

“You’ve got two Apaches orbiting 2 kilometers to the north and two Kiowas inbound from the south to cover you…” Having friends is good… having friends with guns and rockets is better.

“He’s going to make it.” Out of the 94 missions I had been on, only two patients succumbed to their injuries shortly after we brought them to the Combat Support Hospital… and there was nothing we didn’t do for those two.

“Hey, you did good.” Individual effort was vital to the collective success, but it was still good to hear.